Around 80,000 Iowa employee names, birth dates and social security numbers have been exposed after a server was hacked.

The Iowa racing and gaming commission reported the incident on Saturday after it took place on Tuesday 26th January, stating that it was an outside attack. In a statement on its website, it said that the compromise took place when the state firewall functionality was circumvented due to network routing changes and a licensing database was breached.

It said: “The information potentially released by the breach would be the information contained on your occupational license application (i.e. name, social security number, date of birth etc.)

“The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission is unaware of any incident of identity theft related to this breach however you may place a 90 day fraud victim alert on your credit report. We regret that this incident has occurred.”

ABC's KAAL TV news reported that the 80,000 records contained casino employee information that led to the personal details, while the Chicago Tribune said that the person who hacked into the system had used a computer with an external account.

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